Japan Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant blog
Tracking Fukushima news from day 1 : | Now one of the world's largest Public Available Repositories of the Chronology of the Daiichi Nuclear ongoing Disaster.
This entire site and content is 100% copyright (for commercial replication), please use the form to submit application for re-use. This site is 100% Educational and all licences in relation to reporting are attended to.

Wednesday, 2 September 2015

Greenpeace has lashed out against the conclusions of IAEA’s latest
report on the Fukushima disaster, calling the claim that radioactive
exposure is “unlikely” to result in increased thyroid cancer risk in
children a political rhetoric rather than science.

On Monday, IAEA said that despite uncertainties about the radiation doses incurred by children immediately after the accident, “an increase in childhood thyroid cancer attributable to the accident is unlikely.”

On Tuesday, Greenpeace slammed the conclusions of the UN body as being ‘political rhetoric’.“Nobody
knows how much radiation citizens were exposed to in the immediate days
following the disaster. If you don’t know the doses, then you can’t
conclude there won’t be any consequences. To say otherwise is political
rhetoric, not science,” said Kendra Ulrich, senior global energy campaigner with Greenpeace Japan.
Part
of the reason why no solid data is available regarding the potential
exposure of the civilian population, as IAEA notes, resulted from the
chaos and unpreparedness of the authorities to deal with and document
the radiological impact of the March 2011 industrial disaster. Besides security and design “weaknesses”
at the nuclear facility, IAEA also noted the government’s failure to
swiftly and uniformly distribute stable iodine to block radiological
effects in humans.

Greenpeace notes that those were evident failures on behalf of both
Tepco and Tokyo, and remains certain that there is no safe level of
radiation exposure following a nuclear disaster.
Meanwhile,
Japanese media reported that yet another youth has been diagnosed with
thyroid cancer, bringing the total number of young victims to 104, out
of the 385,000 Fukushima Prefecture non-adult residents at the time of the accident.

At the same time, the prefectural government committee investigating the issue said that “as
of now, it is unlikely for the thyroid cancers found in Fukushima
Prefecture to have been caused by the nuclear power plant accident,” Asahi News quotes.
Greenpeace blames IAEA for being complicit in covering up the truth about the potential harm posed by Fukushima fallout.“The
IAEA report actively supports the Abe government’s and the global
nuclear industry’s agenda to make it appear that things can return to
normal after a nuclear disaster,” Ulrich said. She accused Tokyo of
giving the green light for Fukushima residents to return home, despite
the risk of further nuclear exposure.
The organization also
criticized the government’s move to restart nuclear power plants in the
country. Last month, the Japanese government approved the program, which
would let evacuees temporarily return to their homes for up to three
months. The program is a step towards lifting the evacuation order and
encouraging people to go back to their former residencies.“But there is nothing normal about the lifestyle and exposure rates that the victims are being asked to return to,” Ulrich continued. “To
intentionally subject nuclear victims to raised radiation levels is
unjustified, particularly when we have the tragic reminder of Chernobyl
where we saw increased rates of cancers more than five years after the
crisis.”
The environmental NGO claims that its July
investigation registered radioactive contamination levels in Fukushima
prefecture at such a “high level” that it would be “impossible” for people to return.
Tokyo
plans to lift the evacuation order by spring 2017 for many parts of the
evacuation area stretching to a 20-kilometer radius around the
Fukushima plant in addition to other zones that had high levels of
radiation. Currently about 79,000 people from 10 localities remain
evacuated.
Source: RT
http://www.rt.com/news/314053-greenpeace-criticises-iaea-fukushima/